Wednesday, January 14, 2015

The Digital Dozen does Fairy Tales - Day 3: The Golden Bird

Day 3 of The Digital Dozen does Fairy Tales is upon us (yay!), and holy wow am I discovering just how many classic fairy tales are out there! Hans Christian Andersen and the Brother's Grimm each have such prolific works that it's a bit daunting attempting to narrow down potential stories. I've taken to the 'scroll-and-scan' technique, where I scroll down the list of fairy tales and scan for titles that jump out at me.

Tonight's fairy tale manicure is the result of this technique as I have never heard of this story before, but I instantly liked the premise. The Golden Bird tells the story of a king who has a tree of golden apples, but each year, one golden apple gets stolen. Obviously (I mean, we need some conflict!), the king is a bit miffed by his apples disappearing so he sets his 3 sons on the task of discovering who is stealing the apple.Two of the brothers fall asleep, but the third brother manages to stay awake and discover that a golden bird has been stealing the apples. In an attempt to stop the bird, the third brother shoots an arrow at the bird, but misses and knocks a single golden feather off the bird instead. The feather becomes immensely valuable so the king sends the 3 brothers off on a quest to catch the bird.
The story gets a bit weird from this point on, but it's a fairly interesting read if anyone is interested (spoiler alert: a fox, horse, and princess join the story and all sorts of betrayals and shenanigans ensue).
Anyway! Back to the mani at hand ;) I started with a base of Zoya's Sailor, then did a white based outline of the tree, feather and bird. I used a similar technique to yesterday's mani and painted over the white with acrylic paints. The golden bird is a mix of Essie's As Good As Gold and yellow and gold acrylic paints. I really wanted to convey the start of the rising action of this tale so I kept it simple and didn't try to add in any of the brothers - besides, I really love the combo of the gold, navy, and green together!
So far, this mani has been my favorite of the week! I think I love painting night scenes with teeny tiny little stars to help bring the whole look together. How do you like this look? Have you heard of this fairy tale before?

Check out the inlinkz below for everyone's Day 3 looks and happy polishing :)